Norman Hartnell


Sir Norman Bishop Hartnell was a leading British fashion designer, best known for his work for the ladies of the royal family. Hartnell gained the Royal Warrant as Dressmaker to Queen Elizabeth in 1940, and Royal Warrant as Dressmaker to Queen Elizabeth II in 1957.

Early life and career

Hartnell was born in Streatham, southwest London. His parents were then publicans and owners of the Crown & Sceptre, at the top of Streatham Hill. Educated at Mill Hill School, Hartnell became an undergraduate at Magdalene College, Cambridge and read Modern Languages.
Hartnell's main interests were in performing in, and designing for, productions at Cambridge University, and first came to fashion after designing for the university's Footlights performances whilst an undergraduate, a production which transferred to Daly's Theatre, London. He then worked unsuccessfully for two London designers, including Lucile, whom he sued for damages when several of his drawings appeared unattributed in her weekly fashion column in the London Daily Sketch.
In 1923, Hartnell opened his own business at 10 Bruton Street, Mayfair, with the financial help of his father and first business colleague, his sister Phyllis.
The Doctor Who actor William Hartnell was his second cousin.

1923–1934

Thanks to his Cambridge connections, Hartnell acquired a clientele of débutantes and their mothers, who desired fashionable and original designs for a busy social life centred on the London Season. Hartnell was considered by some to be a good London alternative to Parisian or older London dress houses, and the London press seized on the novelty of his youth and gender.
Although expressing the spirit of the Bright Young Things and Flappers, his designs overlaid the harder silhouettes with a fluid romanticism in detail and construction. This was most evident in Hartnell's predilection for evening and bridal gowns, gowns for court presentations, and afternoon gowns for guests at society weddings. He designed the bridal gown for Claire Huth Jackson in 1935, when she married Louis de Loriol - He became guardian to their son Peter-Gabriel. Hartnell's success ensured international press coverage and a flourishing trade with those no longer content with 'safe' London clothes derived from Parisian designs. Hartnell became popular with the younger stars of stage and screen, and went on to dress such leading ladies as Gladys Cooper, Elsie Randolph, Gertrude Lawrence, Jessie Matthews, Merle Oberon, Evelyn Laye and Anna Neagle; even top French stars Alice Delysia and Mistinguett were said to be impressed by Hartnell's designs.
Alarmed by a lack of sales, his sister Phyllis insisted that Norman cease his pre-occupation eveningwear and instead focus on creating practical day clothes. Hartnell utilised British woollen fabrics to subtle and ingenious effect; though previously sidelined by London dressmaking, the use of wool fabrics in ladies' day clothing had already successfully demonstrated in Paris by Coco Chanel, who showed a keen interest in his 1927 and 1929 collections.
Hartnell successfully emulated his British predecessor and hero Charles Frederick Worth by taking his designs to the heart of world fashion. Hartnell specialised in expensive and often lavish embroidery as an integral part of his most expensive clothes, which he also utilised to prevent exact ready-to-wear copies being made of his clothing. The Hartnell in-house embroidery workroom was the largest in London couture, and continued until his death in 1979, also producing the embroidered Christmas cards for clients and press during quiet August days, a practical form of publicity at which Hartnell was adept. The originality and intricacy of Hartnell embroideries were frequently described in the press, especially in reports of the original wedding dresses he designed for socially prominent young women during the 1920s and 1930s.

1934–1940

By 1934, Hartnell's success had outgrown his premises, and he moved over the road to a large Mayfair town house already provided with floors of work-rooms at the rear to Bruton Mews. The first-floor salon was the height of modernity, a glass and mirror-lined Art Moderne space designed by the innovative young architect Gerald Lacoste, and proved the perfect background for each new season of Hartnell designs. The interiors of the large late 18th-century town house are now preserved as one of the finest examples of art-moderne pre-war commercial design in the UK.
At the same time Hartnell moved into the new building, he acquired a weekend retreat, Lovel Dene, a Queen Anne cottage in Windsor Forest, Berkshire. The cottage was extensively re-modelled for him by Lacoste. Hartnell's London residence, The Tower House, Park Village in West Regent's Park, was also remodelled and furnished with a fashionable mixture of Regency and modern furniture.
In 1935, Hartnell received the first of what was to be numerous commissions from the British royal family, in designing the wedding dress and bridesmaid's dresses for the wedding of Lady Alice Montagu Douglas Scott to Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester. The two bridesmaids were Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret. Both King George V and Queen Mary approved the designs, the latter also becoming a client. The Duchess of York, then a client of Elizabeth Handley-Seymour, who had made her wedding dress in 1923, accompanied her daughters to the Hartnell salon to view the fittings and met the designer for the first time.
Although Hartnell's designs for the Duchess of Gloucester's wedding and her trousseau achieved worldwide publicity, the death of the bride's father and consequent period of mourning before the wedding led to what had been planned as a large state wedding, taking place at Westminster Abbey, instead being held privately in the chapel of Buckingham Palace. Hartnell regretted that his work on the designs for the occasion had been denied worldwide publicity; however, vast crowds did see the newest member of the royal family drive off from Buckingham Palace wearing a Hartnell ensemble for her honeymoon, and the seal of royal approval led to increased business for Hartnell.
For the 1937 coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, the Queen ordered the maid of honour dresses from Hartnell, remaining loyal to Handley-Seymour for her coronation gown. Until 1939, Hartnell received most of the Queen's orders, and after 1946, with the exception of some country clothes, she remained a Hartnell client, even after his death. Hartnell's ability in adapting current fashion to a personal royal style began with designs with a slimmed-down fit for day and evening wear. The new Queen was short, and her new clothes gave her height and distinction; public day-clothes usually consisted of a long or three-quarter length coat over a slim skirt, often embellished with fur trimmings or some detail around the neck. His designs for the Queen's evening wear varied from unembellished slim dresses to evening wear embroidered with sequins and glass. There was a complete change of style apparent in designs for the grander evening occasions, when Hartnell re-introduced the crinoline to world fashion, after the King showed Hartnell the Winterhalter portraits in the Royal Collection. King George suggested that the style favoured earlier by Queen Victoria would enhance the Queen's presence.
Wallis Simpson, subsequently the Duchess of Windsor following her marriage to Edward VIII, was also a London Hartnell client, later patronizing Mainbocher, who made her wedding dress. Bocher was a friend of Hartnell's with whom the latter credited with sound early advice, when he showed his 1929 summer collection in Paris. Then a Vogue editor, Bocher told Hartnell that he had seldom seen so many wonderful dresses so badly made. Hartnell took his advice and employed the talented Parisian 'Mamselle' Davide, reputedly the highest paid member of any London couture house, and other talented cutters, fitters and tailors to execute his designs to the highest international couture standards by the 1930s. In 1929, Hartnell showed his clothes to the international press in Paris, and the floor-length hems of his evening dresses, after a decade of rising hems, were hailed as the advent of a new fashion, copied throughout the world as evidenced by the press of the time. His clothes were so popular with the press that he opened a House in Paris in order to participate in Parisian Collection showings.
Within a decade, Hartnell again effectively changed the fashionable evening dress silhouette, when more of the crinoline dresses worn by the Queen during the State Visit to Paris in July 1938 also created a worldwide sensation viewed in the press and on news-reels. The death of the Queen's mother, the Countess of Strathmore and Kinghorne, before the visit resulted in court mourning and a short delay in the dates of the visit to a vital British ally, of enormous political significance at a time when Germany was threatening war in Europe. Royal mourning dictated black and shades of mauve, which meant that all the clothes utilising colour for the planned June visit had to be re-made; Hartnell's workrooms worked long hours to create a new wardrobe in white, which Hartnell remembered had a precedent in British royal mourning protocol, and was not unknown for a younger queen.
Hartnell was decorated by the French government and his friend Christian Dior, creator of the full-skirted post-war New Look; Dior himself was not immune to the influence and romance of Hartnell's new designs, publicly stating that whenever he thought of beautiful clothes, it was of those created by Hartnell for the 1938 State Visit, which he viewed as a young aspirant in the fashion world. The crinoline fashion for evening wear influenced fashion internationally, and French designers were quick to take up the influence of the Scottish-born Queen and the many kilted Scots soldiers in Paris for the State Visit; day clothes featuring plaids or tartans were evident in the next season's collections of many Parisian designers.
The Queen commanded another extensive wardrobe by Hartnell for the Royal Tour of Canada and visit to North America during May and June 1939. At a critical time in world history, the visit cemented North American ties of friendship in the months before the outbreak of World War II in September 1939. The King and Queen were received with enormous acclaim by great crowds throughout the tour and visit and the dignity and charm of the Queen were undoubtedly aided by her Hartnell wardrobe; Adolf Hitler termed Queen Elizabeth "the most dangerous woman in Europe" on viewing film footage of the successful tour.
By 1939, largely due to Hartnell's success, London was known as an innovative fashion centre and was often visited first by American buyers before they travelled on to Paris. Hartnell had already had substantial American sales to various shops and copyists, a lucrative source of income to all designers. Some French designers, such as Anglo-Irish Edward Molyneux and Elsa Schiaparelli, opened London houses, which had a glittering social life centred around the Court. Young British designers opened their own Houses, such as Victor Stiebel and Digby Morton, formerly at Lachasse where Hardy Amies was the designer after 1935. Peter Russell also opened his own House, and all attracted younger women. Older more staid generations still patronised the older London Houses of Handley-Seymour, Reville and the British-owned London concessions of the House of Worth and Paquin. Before Hartnell established himself, the only British designer with a worldwide reputation for originality in design and finish was Lucile, whose London house closed in 1924.
The younger members of the British royal family attracted worldwide publicity, drawing attention to Hartnell by association. Whilst it was a triumph for Hartnell to have gained Queen Mary as a client, the four young wives of her four sons created fashion news. Princess Marina, was a notable figure and a patron of Edward Molyneux in Paris. He designed her 1934 wedding dress and the bridesmaids dresses for her marriage to Queen Mary's fourth son Prince George, Duke of Kent and when Molyneux opened his London salon, also designed by Lacoste, she became a steady client of his until he closed the business in 1950. Thereafter, she was often a Hartnell client. Hartnell would go on to receive a Royal Warrant in 1940 as Dressmaker to the Queen.